The particular piece of law in question has been described as a “blanket ban” by the seventh U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Chicago, who also said that it was too broad and simply didn’t protect children as it was supposed to on the Internet.

The move has been used to overrule a federal judge’s decision in a previous case. It is understood to involve the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, who filed a class-action suit on behalf of a man who had already served three years in jail for child exploitation. Interestingly, this individual, along with a number of other sex offenders, have been affected by the same ban in the state of Indiana, even though they have already finished their probation period. The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana has since been fighting to have the ban overturned.

According to AP, U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt originally ruled back in June last year (before the overruling today by the U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Chicago), that the state of Indiana wanted to protect children online and felt that social networking sites, including Facebook, were “a virtual playground for sexual predators to lurk.”

It is understood that federal judges in other states, such as Nebraska and Louisiana, have also barred laws that restrict sex offenders in a similar manner.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, as well as the Indiana attorney general’s office, told AP today that they couldn’t comment on the ruling as they hadn’t had a chance to review it yet.

Nick Summers is a technology journalist for The Next Web. He writes on all sorts of topics, although he has a passion for gadgets, apps and video games in particular. You can reach him on Twitter, circle him on Google+ and connect with him on LinkedIn.